3As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; 4and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” 5And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, 6but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” Acts 9:3-6
The story of Paul’s conversion appears to teach that the sovereign hand of God produces the repentance (a change of mind) that’s required for salvation. He was stopped dead in his tracks, blinded, and at the mercy of his associates to get him into the city.
Paul’s experience stands in dramatic contrast to the salvation experience of the thief on the cross, who recognized his sin, was contrite, and then asked Jesus to remember him. We recall there were two thieves on crosses on either side of Jesus on Calvary, and only one changed his mind about him, and only one entered paradise that day.
Then there’s the Rich Young Ruler. This man did not change his mind about Jesus and he did not enter the kingdom of heaven. So was Paul’s experience an outlier?
We do not get the impression that Paul had any opportunity to walk away. In a split second, Jesus was real, alive, and irresistibly beckoning. Paul was guilty as charged, and he was at the Lord’s mercy. A lot transpired in his head in the three days that followed, but surely he would not be returning to his former ways. He was totally reliant upon God to return his sight, and we read that the Almighty was working all the angles to get him into the waters of baptism.
So when I hear of the debate in evangelical circles about where repentance fits in, that we don’t want to allude to any “work” required leading to salvation in our gospel messages, I think of these two extremes and throw up my hands. Certainly salvation does not hang on the structure of someone’s else’s gospel presentation! I then harken back to the words of the blind man who was healed by the Lord who said, “All I know is that I was blind and now I see.”
The answer is, therefore, whatever angle we come from, Jesus must change the mind and heart for us to be saved. At the same time, who needs a savior if one does not fear for his or her life? Perhaps what we say is not technical but rather whatever the Spirit of God puts on our hearts to say at the moment, then we get out of the way.
We’ll really never understand the miracle of salvation, so let’s not reduce the gospel message to a mathematical equation.
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